Review: wurdle

Overview
While Boggle-style word games are great fun, wurdle takes the genre one step further, letting users change the minimum word length and do away with those annoying three-letter throwaways that seem to always be in endless supply. It’s challenging, fun, customizable and blows away Quordy, the previous Boggle-style standard bearer.

Gameplay

Besides offering the simplicity of stringing together words with a finger, wurdle lets you do it in style.
As if colored iPhone cases, armbands and headphones weren’t enough, you can now match your wurdle game board to your man-purse. Or face (not kidding about the face, you can choose a photo from your library and set it as the game board background, allowing you to stare yourself down while wurdling away).

Although I personally would have preferred a darker hue of magenta, there is a solid selection of tiles to choose from.
Fashion aside, the app offers outstanding game flexibility. Board size, time limit, word length, dictionary, sounds, shuffle sensitivity and status bar visibility are all adjustable.

The game itself functions well, allowing you to shuffle and rearrange tiles by shaking the phone (although there is a point penalty for each reshuffle). Wurdle offers a list of all possible words at the end of each game (including words for each shuffle, or game board that you used in a game) and plays a set of friendly sound effects throughout, which can be switched off.
A link from the wurdle app allows users to easily submit to and access the online high score list.
A phone call interruption will force you to relaunch the app and start a new game, as will any break to the home screen.
If the screen is darkened or put to sleep, the game will pause automatically.

Review

Wurdle is cheaper than Quordy and better in every way except one: there is no multiplayer option, not even a pass-and-play mode.
While this is a flaw, the game is so user-friendly and fun that it makes up for it.
The fact that it goes straight into a wurdle game after launching (and loading) makes it a good, quick option for gameplay.
Also, since I’m often frustrated by all of the lame and never-used three-letter words that I miss, like als, apo, ars, col and lar, it’s nice to know that I can be rid of them forever by setting the minimum word length at four letters.
The overall flexibility of the look and feel of wurdle is impressive on its own, and yes, it’s great to be able to match my board to my tie.
There are a couple of minor problems:
There was no way to know exactly how many points were possible in each game played, nor was there a figure for a total number of words made to compare with a total number of words possible. These statistics would offer some added motivation and entertainment.
The addition of an autosave feature, for use when exiting the app or accepting a phone call, would also be useful.

Summary

Wurdle is a well-priced and well-made word game that is flexible, challenging and fun. It’s a great buy, for word-game fans and casual gamers alike.